Christianity's Relationship to Culture

Most of the world religions have relationship to culture. All cultures have, in fact, similar morality. People all over the world realize how they should act according to the “Law of Nature” and the “Law of Morality”. Christianity has its own approach to culture that can be observed from the point of view of their beliefs, moral and ethical norms. Christianity’s approach to culture provides a certain set of rules, traditions and norms. Christianity itself encompasses three main branches, i.e. Catholicism, Protestantism and Eastern Christianity, which differ from each other in regard of their traditions, attitude to various human values and beliefs (Lewis, 2009). Although all cultures have the same moral code, they often behave differently in the same situations.

As a rule, people often break the universal “Law of Human Nature” though they are well-aware what is good and what is evil. The Bible offers believers to engage their culture positively. People are often prone to break cultural demands that are demonstrated in the Old Testament. Christianity relationship to culture in sense of materialism has captured the minds of many scholars today. Materialism as a philosophical issue works against the spiritual and intellectual. This can be a vivid example how Christians break he universal “Law of Human Nature” (Johnson, 2009).Materialism is a great threat of any culture and nation. It, therefore, works against intelligence. American consumerism has emerged into culture during the era of Postmodernism where cultural and moral values are lost, and people are addicted to be consumers without savings.

Mortgage and banking defaults which recently took place in the USA and the other countries is to some extent the result of growing material demands of people. Some historians consider materialism to be a kind of vast social collectivism (Huberman, 2006). Lewis, S.C. (2009), in his book Mere Christianity asserts that few people feel comfortable in their materialist homes without God. The problem is that consumerism has involved people into materialistic world making them slaves of materialistic values. More efficient social patterns are supposed to dominate in the world in order to keep Christianity’s culture. Materialism is dominated in culture by four legacies.

Firstly, this is a rejection of reason and objective truth. As a result, humans are estimated not by their intelligence, but by their wealth. Lewis depicted life of a materialist as a stage where nothing is real. Therefore, a materialist himself is not real. Secondly, debunking of objective morality leads materialists to deny the existence standards in Christian culture, claiming that the environment dictated our moral beliefs. Thirdly, materialism denies personal responsibilities. Materialists consider that human actions are a result of biology and environment and not personal responsibility. Criminal justice system as well as welfare system serves as evidence of these beliefs. And lastly, proliferation of coercive utopianism denies the power of human beings to change or improve the world (Huberman, 2006). They believe that they are merely servants of the forces of materialism.

These statements may be considered by different people to be either true or false. But it is evident that the world is changing and, therefore, cultural standards are not stable. The era of new technology has influenced humans’ cultural values and ethical norms. In order to survive, people must not forget about the dominant cultural values and norms. That is why, it is important to live in accordance with Christian morality and keep one’s culture. In other words, culture is the main source of people’s morality and intelligence. Christian culture has been developed during centuries, and people must keep it for future generations in order to live in harmony with nature, environment and themselves.